Just twenty-two years after this bout with Cupid, General George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, occupied the Roger Morris Mansion as headquarters, the occupants having fled. Washington had a sly sense of humor, and on the occasion of his moving into the mansion, remarked to Colonel Aaron Burr, his aide, "I move in here for sentimental reasons—I have a small and indirect claim on the place."
It was Washington who formally confiscated the property, and turned it over to the State of New York as contraband of war. The Morris estate of about fifty thousand acres was parceled out and sold by the State of New York to settlers. It seems, however, that Roger Morris had only a life-interest in the estate, and this was a legal point so fine that it was entirely overlooked in the joy of confiscation. Washington was a great soldier, but an indifferent lawyer.
John Jacob Astor accidentally ascertained the facts. He was convinced that the heirs could not be robbed of their rights through the acts of a leaseholder, which legally was the status of Roger Morris. Astor was a good real-estate lawyer himself, but he referred the point to the best counsel he could find. They agreed with him. He next hunted up the heirs and bought their quitclaims for one hundred thousand dollars. He then notified the parties who had purchased the land, and they in turn made claim upon the State for protection.
After much legal parleying the case was tried according to stipulation with the State of New York, directly, as defendant, and Astor and the occupants, as plaintiffs. Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren appeared for the State, and an array of lesser legal lights for Astor.
The case was narrowed down to the plain and simple point that Roger Morris was not the legal owner of the estate, and that the rightful heirs could not be made to suffer for the "treason, contumacy and contravention" of another. Astor won, and as a compromise the State issued him twenty-year bonds bearing six per cent interest, for the neat sum of five hundred thousand dollars—not that Astor needed the money, but finance was to him a game, and he had won.
In front of the first A. T. Stewart store there used to be an old woman who sold apples. Regardless of weather, there she sat and mumbled her wares at the passer-by. She was a combination beggar and merchant, with a blundering wit, a ready tongue and a vocabulary unfit for publication.
Her commercial genius is shown in the fact that she secured one good-paying customer—Alexander T. Stewart. Stewart grew to believe in her as his spirit of good luck. Once when bargains had been offered at the Stewart store and the old woman was not at her place on the curb, the merchant-prince sent his carriage for her in hot haste, "lest offense be given." And the day was saved.
When the original store was abandoned for the Stewart "Palace," the old apple-woman, with her box, basket and umbrella, was tenderly taken along, too.
John Jacob Astor had no such belief in luck-omens, portents, or mascots as had A. T. Stewart. With him success was a sequence—a result—it was all cause and effect. A. T. Stewart did not trust entirely to luck, for he, too, carefully devised and planned. But the difference between the Celtic and the Teutonic mind is shown in that Stewart hoped to succeed, while Astor knew that he would. One was a bit anxious; the other exasperatingly placid.